ABOUT MERGE
Giving You the Tools You Need to put Humanality Back into Life
hu-ma-nal-i-ty (n): [hyou-muh-nal-i-tee]
1. The quality of being a person
2. The essential character of a person
3. The sum total of the physical, mental, emotional, and social characteristics of an individual
4. That which is common in each of us
The Merge evaluation software - SETS: Student Evaluation & Tracking System - empowers you to focus on your core mission of developing those abilities that you know are most important for your clients, the strengths that a person must have to develop and grow into a competent, engaged person. In the process, it helps you reinforce your clients' humanality.
You don't run an ordinary program, do you? That's why an ordinary evaluation tool won't be right for you, and why we know you'll be delighted with SETS. Just like there is no other program like yours, there is no other evlaluation software on the market like SETS.
How did Merge do it? That's an interesting and rather unusual story.
All About Merge: A Life Story
What makes Merge visionary Bill Rossi someone who can empower others to put humanality back into life?
Bill Rossi is a ‘natural expert’ in these fields because he’s been there – he swam in those waters, came close to drowning, and taught himself to swim.
He then developed evaluation software and arts mentoring materials others could use to support their core mission: empowering their students and clients to know themselves and become stronger, happier people.
The Back Story
Bill's creative way of learning made his schooling years very difficult; in fact, his education put him at risk. Not only were his teachers unable to support his creative way of learning, they convinced him that the problem was with him. Like so many others who are unable to learn in ways that are natural to them, over time he increasingly battled with depression.
Fortunately he loved music, and it became the place he went to for relief - he also self-educated at the city library after school. And despite being told by high school counselors that he wasn't college material, he did gain admission to Berklee College of Music, and in 1971 graduated with a degree in Composition and Arrangement. He taught piano and theory on staff at Berkeley for two years, and then taught and played professionally in Miami, Cincinnati, and Seattle.
During this time, however, he continued to feel that something was missing. By the time he was 30, he realized what it was: he had never learned who he was.
A New Way
He decided that music was the way into who he was, but he needed to re-learn it because he’d been taught music the same way he’d been taught academics – just as he’d been given information so he could emulate others, he’d been given musical technique so he could “sound like” someone else.
Learning in this way had given him little sense of who he was, little strength to find the personal pathways that were right for him, and like most creative people he had a strong desire to do that.
So for the next five years, he re-learned the music – he took it apart and went back to its roots (which, in the case of Jazz, is the Blues) so he could experience it from a very personal place and develop it (and himself, in the process) from there.
In 1985 he married and relocated to Seattle, where he opened a private studio. He taught from a very different perspective because he understood what had been missing: traditional education, while good at academic and skill development, lacks the emotional and psychological development necessary to make it personally relevant. 
Over the next 5 years, Bill developed his unique approach that accommodates students’ learning styles, abilities, and interests in a way that empowers them to go deep inside themselves to find their unique (and very satisfying) way of expressing who they are.
Bill's accomplishments over the years demonstrate our ability as human beings to rise above circumstance and succeed if we’re able to find the personal pathways that are right for us; they also endorse his ability to empower others to do the same:
1995 - 2012
- Bill developed and managed an arts mentoring nonprofit, which served over 3,000 challenged youth.
- His program was awarded an Arts Learning Grant from the National Endowment for the Arts and other national support, while partnering with the major organizations in Seattle
- His program served hundreds of youth under a 4-year contract with a large therapeutic treatment facility
- He took a sabbatical to create the Merge System for Creative Education, authoring, co-authoring and publishing three books and an evaluation software.
If you listen to traditional educators his story is, at best, highly unlikely. Someone who was considered not to be "college material" accomplished all of this - including authoring an evaluation software?
But Bill knows there are many thousands of talented people in our country whose potential is laying dormant - all from lack of opportunity. He hopes to help change that, in part by serving as an example of the (typically) untapped resource in the grassroots of America and also by offering materials to share his approach.
Merge Education now disseminates the complete system of books, curricula, evaluation software, and consultation with the intention of making the journey a little easier for others who just need the empowerment, guidance, and support to find their way through life.
Experience the Difference!
In-the-Box: Stale, lacking oxygen, cramped, boring, lifeless. Leads to high drop-out and low graduation rates and self-destructive behavior. Most often found in current educational practices.
Out-of-the-Box: Alive, growing, full of feeling, soulful, worth doing. Leads to improved relationships, community involvement, and desire to take care of oneself. Found in creative initiatives and in Venturing Together: Empowering Students to Succeed.
Ready to Be More Creative?
Get Venturing Together: Empowering Students to Succeed and start today!
For more information, call (484.887.0377) or email us.
